Enterprise spending on SaaS applications is approaching 30% of all application spending, and is currently growing at a 17.6% CAGR from 2013 to 2018. By 2018, 62% of all CRM software will be cloud-based, with Salesforce solidifying its market leadership position. These and other insights are from Byron Deeters’ State of the Cloud Report 2015 from Bessemer Venture Partners.

It can’t cook or clean or do laundry, but SoftBank’s Pepper could become the first breakout humanoid consumer robot and the vanguard of an era of mechanized, cloud-connected assistants. Pepper goes on sale in Japan on Saturday at ¥198,000 (US$1,600) plus ¥24,600 in monthly data and insurance fees.

Google has been building its own software-defined data-center networks for 10 years because traditional gear can’t handle the scale of what are essentially warehouse-sized computers. The company hasn’t said much before about that homegrown infrastructure, but one of its networking chiefs provided some details on Wednesday at Open Network Summit and in a blog post. The current network design, which powers all of Google’s data centers, has a maximum capacity of 1.13 petabits per second.

By Dennis McCafferty Nearly six out of 10 survey respondents said their company is taking on a big data project, and an additional one out of five said they will start one soon. CEO: 32%, CIO: 25%, Line of business managers: 18% Silos: 21%, Lack of funding: 21%, No consensus on goals: 16%, Absence of executive support: 16% Data quality: 21%, Outdated infrastructure: 20%, Lack of internal tech expertise: 18%, Governance and security challenges: 17%, Data and legacy app silos: 12% 34% of survey respondents said their companies spend between $50,000 and $100,000 on big data efforts, and ...